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Recycling?
"GM" wrote in message ... Ophelia wrote: > "GM" wrote in message > ... > > https://fee.org/articles/america-fin...-doesn-t-work/ > > America Finally Admits Recycling Doesnt Work > > Its time to admit the recycling mania is a giant placebo. > > Thursday, March 21, 2019 > > by Jon Miltimore > > "A couple of years ago, after sending my five-year-old daughter off to > school, she came home reciting the same cheerful environmental mantra I > was > taught in elementary school. > > €śReduce, reuse, recycle,€ť she beamed, proud to show off a bit of rote > learning. > > The moral virtue of recycling is rarely questioned in the United States. > It > has been ingrained into the American psyche over several decades. On a > recent trip to the Caribbean, my friends wife exhibited nervous guilt > while > collecting empty soda, water, and beer bottles destined for the trash > since > our resort offered no recycling bins. > > €śI feel terrible throwing these into garbage,€ť she said, wearing a pained > look on her face. > > I didnt have the heart to tell her that there was a good chance the > bottles > she was recycling back in the States were ending up just like the ones on > the Caribbean island we were visiting. > > > Difficult Implementation > > As Discover magazine pointed out a decade ago, recycling is tricky > business. > A 2010 Columbia University study found that just 16.5 percent of the > plastic > collected by the New York Department of Sanitation was €śrecyclable.€ť > > €śThis results in nearly half of the plastics collected being landfilled,€ť > researchers concluded. > > Since that time, things have only gotten worse. Over the weekend, The New > York Times ran a story detailing how hundreds of cities across the country > are abandoning recycling efforts. > > 'Philadelphia is now burning about half of its 1.5 million residents > recycling material in an incinerator that converts waste to energy. In > Memphis, the international airport still has recycling bins around the > terminals, but every collected can, bottle and newspaper is sent to a > landfill. And last month, officials in the central Florida city of Deltona > faced the reality that, despite their best efforts to recycle, their > curbside program was not working and suspended it. Those are just three of > the hundreds of towns and cities across the country that have canceled > recycling programs, limited the types of material they accepted or agreed > to > huge price increases.' > > One reason for this is that China, perhaps the largest buyer of US > recyclables, stopped accepting them in 2018. Other countries, such as > Thailand and India, have increased imports, but not in sufficient tonnage > to > alleviate the mounting costs cities are facing. > > €śWe are in a crisis moment in the recycling movement right now,€ť Fiona Ma, > the treasurer of California, told the Times. > > Cost is the key word. Like any activity or service, recycling is an > economic > activity. The dirty little secret is that the benefits of recycling have > always been dubious for some time. > > €śRecycling has been dysfunctional for a long time,€ť Mitch Hedlund, > executive > director of Recycle Across America, told The Times. > > > Has Recycling Always Been An Illusion? > > How long? Perhaps from the very beginning. Nearly a quarter century ago, > Lawrence Reed wrote about the growing fad of recycling, which state and > local governments were pursuing€”mostly through mandates, naturally€”with a > religious-like fervor. There were numerous problems with the approach, he > observed. > > The fact is that sometimes recycling makes sense and sometimes it doesnt. > In the legislative rush to pass recycling mandates, state and local > governments should pause to consider the science and the economics of > every > proposition. Often, bad ideas are worse than none at all and can produce > lasting damage if they are enshrined in law. Simply demanding that > something > be recycled can be disruptive of markets and it does not guarantee that > recycling that makes either economic or environmental sense will even > occur. > > If only lawmakers had heeded Mr. Reeds advice, or that of John Tierney, > who > offered similar guidance in The Times the following year. > > Believing that there was no more room in landfills, Americans concluded > that > recycling was their only option. Their intentions were good and their > conclusions seemed plausible. Recycling does sometimes make sense--for > some > materials in some places at some times. But the simplest and cheapest > option > is usually to bury garbage in an environmentally safe landfill. And since > there's no shortage of landfill space (the crisis of 1987 was a false > alarm), there's no reason to make recycling a legal or moral imperative. > > Thats economics, you say. What about the environment? Well, the > environmental benefits of recycling are far from clear. For starters, as > Popular Mechanics noted a few years ago, the idea that we dont have > sufficient space to safely store trash is untrue. > > 'According to one calculation, all the garbage produced in the U.S. for > the > next 1000 years could fit into a landfill 100 yards deep and 35 miles > across > on each side--not that big (unless you happen to live in the > neighborhood). > Or put another way, it would take another 20 years to run through the > landfills that the U.S. has already built. So the notion that we're > running > out of landfill space--the original impetus for the recycling boom--turns > out to have been a red herring.' > > > Recycling Efforts Backfire and Create Waste Themselves > > And then there are the energy and resources that go into recycling. How > much > water do Americans spend annually recycling items that end up in a > landfill? > How much fuel is spent deploying fleets of barges and trucks across > highways > and oceans, carrying tons of garbage to be processed at facilities that > belch their own emissions? > > The data on this front is thin, and results on the environmental > effectiveness of recycling vary based on the material being recycled. Yet > all of this presumes the recyclables are not being cleaned and shipped > only > to be buried in a landfill, like so much of it is today. This, Mises > would, > say is planned chaos, the inevitable result of central planners making > decisions instead of consumers through free markets. > > Most market economists, Reed points out, €śby nature, philosophy, and > experience€ť a bunch skeptical of centrally planned schemes that supplant > choice, were wise to the dynamics of recycling from the beginning. > > As engineer and author Richard Fulmer wrote in 2016, > > 'Recycling resources costs resources. For instance, old newsprint must be > collected, transported, and processed. This requires trucks, which must be > manufactured and fueled, and recycling plants, which must be constructed > and > powered. > > All this also produces pollution €“ from the factories that build the > trucks > and from the fuel burned to power them, and from the factories that > produce > the components to build and construct the recycling plant and from the > fuel > burned to power the plant. If companies can make a profit recycling paper, > then we can be confident that more resources are saved than are used. > However, if recycling is mandated by law, we have no such assurance. > > Again, economics is the key.' > > Its time to admit the recycling mania is a giant placebo. It makes people > feel good, but the idea that it improves the condition of humans or the > planet is highly dubious. > > Its taken three decades, but the actions of hundreds of US cities suggest > Americans are finally willing to entertain the idea that recycling is not > a > moral or legal imperative...." > > </> > > Jonathan Miltimore is the Managing Editor of FEE.org. His > writing/reporting > has appeared in TIME magazine, The Wall Street Journal, CNN, Forbes, Fox > News, and the Washington Times. > > Reach him at . > > </> > > == > > Well I understand that, but I still like to be able to take my garbage to > the garbage centre every week to let them sort it all out  )Luv, If I were you I'd send my rubbish to Janet UK...!!! ;-D Best Greg == Shhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh!! |
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